Cinefex
-''current'' (USA) - (Japan original run) - / (France) - (Italy) - (Japan 1st relaunch) -''current'' (Japan 2nd relaunch) -''current'' (China) |issues = still running 12 (Japan original run) 5+1 (France) 7 (Italy) 39 (Japan 1st relaunch) |editor = Jody Duncan, Joe Fordham (USA) Bernard Achour (France) Pierfilippo Siena (Italy) Akira Sugiyama (Japan 2nd relaunch) Alyona Udalova, Elena Paigildina (Russia) Yong Ma (China) }} Cinefex is a magazine that, from the early 1990s onward, has been published bimonthly. Each issue specifically focuses in-depth on the technical aspects of the special, or rather the visual effects (VFX), used in motion picture productions or, less frequently, in a particular television production which has been groundbreaking in this regard. Launched in under stewardship of Don Shay, it has become the foremost periodical magazine on "special effects", as it was known at the time, in the business, and is (as of ) still being published. Its very first issue was equally dedicated to and the movie . was noteworthy for becoming one of the few television productions to be covered in detail in magazine issue 37, of . The launch of was covered in , albeit far less in-depth than was customary for movie feature productions – or The Next Generation for that matter – , with two short two-page articles, in essence amounting to no more than glorified editorials, on the effects in . Editorial staff has, at some points in time, included Mark Cotta Vaz and David C. Fein. Though there is a certain overlap in the subject matter with the contemporary magazines American Cinematographer and Cinefantastique, Cinefex s focus lies on the various aspects of creating of what is presently called "visual effects", whereas American Cinematographer is focused on the actual filming techniques and Cinefantastique, together with another contemporary publication, , covered a lesser in-depth but wider range of behind-the-scenes aspects. As such, the magazines can be considered complimentary. A trademark feature of the magazine has traditionally been the absence of text imprints on its cover, save for the title and price information in small print. However, in the late 1980s, barcodes were introduced in the magazine world and they started to become prominently featured on the front cover, somewhat "defacing" the cover art and aggravated for Cinefex two decades later when more prominent text imprints, pertaining to a magazine issue´s contents, were also added. Yet, as a courtesy to subscribers/collectors, Cinefex continued the old, "clean" format for its first print run, while using the new, "defacing" format for reprints and retail dissemination. Having become a leading publication on the subject matter of visual effects, the magazine has seen several international variants in translation, released by local publishers; in Japan, the magazine has had by far the longest run, and was intermittently published from mid-1983 onward by several publishers, though the contents were not in sync with their American counterparts at first. The first publication run lasted for only twelve issues and ended in . http://sprocket.eek.jp/monthsp/month2004Feb1.html The magazine was relaunched in , with a restarted numbering as reference books (being endowed with ISBN-numbers) in a vertically orientated format, as opposed to the standard American lying format. In 2003, Cinefex LLC. pulled the license of the relaunch publisher Toys Press Inc. for copyright violations, after it was discovered that they had released unsanctioned side publications based on licensed Cinefex copy, among others a 1997 Star Wars book. http://www.fxguide.com/featured/cinefex_25_years_of_respect/ The first relaunch run had lasted for thirty-nine issues. http://sprocket.eek.jp/monthsp/month2004Feb2.html From onward, the magazine was relaunched, synchronized for the American version contents with a one issue lag, for a second time by Born Digital, Inc., with again a restarted numbering in the format its immediate predecessor had employed, at first adopting their "clean" cover approach before abandoning the format themselves in the early 2010s. Less successful and far shorter-lived efforts were undertaken in France (five issues plus one single issue, stemming from a failed relaunch attempt), Italy (seven edited issues, renamed "CineVfx" for the last three issues http://www.moviemags.com/main.php?title=CINEVFX&month=%&view=main.php) and Russia (which lasted somewhat longer, as at least twenty-nine issues were known to exist by http://startfilm.ru/pressa/15/). As if to underscore the growing importance that Chinese digital effects companies play in the motion picture industry, publisher Don Shay launched a Chinese-language version of the magazine on , in a ceremony at the Chinese Dexter Studios, Beijing. Its publishing company had released the first, vertically orientated issue four days previously, synchronized with issue 142 of the American source publication. http://cinefex.com/blog/cinefex-china/ Noteworthy is that has not received any coverage in Cinefex. On the other hand, while its contemporaries shied away from it due to its bad reception at the time, Cinefex became the only specialized magazine to report in detail on the VFX of . Notable issues Of particular relevance to Star Trek are the following issues: External links * Cinefex.com - Official website * Category:Magazines